If you want to put a furnace anywhere in your house, a direct vent furnace is your best choice, says Jeff Stienstra. As owner of Stienstra Heating and Cooling in Hudsonville, Michigan, he talks here about what direct vent furnaces are all about, and also points out the government utility rebates that are available for people interested in making their home heating systems a little bit more green.
Direct vent furnaces are also called high efficiency furnaces or condensing furnaces, and the efficiency is 90% or above. The reason they can be directly vented through the wall is because the exhaust that goes through the heat exchangers cools to a point that does not require metal venting. And PVC pipes can be used because of the mild temperatures.
No-Chimney Advantage
The advantage of that is you can pretty much put a furnace anywhere in the house or anywhere in the basement without being near a chimney, just near an exterior wall. A lot of chimneys are right in the middle of the house and a standard furnace would have to be vented into the chimney as it can only be a few feet away. But the direct vent furnace does not use a chimney at all, so you can put it anywhere you have access to an exterior wall - up to 40 feet away in some cases.
Direct vent furnaces have two pipes and take air directly from outside. Use it to burn the fuel and it is then exhausted back outside. The two pipes each have a different purpose; they take air directly from the outside, then vent it back outside with the high efficiency furnace.
A lower efficiency furnace sucks air from the surrounding air, the air in the utility room or whatever air is there, then exhausts it out the chimney. That forces air to come in through the cracks in the home, through either older windows or doors or anywhere there is a leakage. It sucks in cold air from outside, creating a draft. An advantage of higher efficiency furnacse is not only more efficient heating but they do not cause full drafts because of the way they are ventilated.
Rebates Available
Also, one more bonus of installing a high efficiency furnace in your home is there is a government tax as well as a government utility rebate available until the end of 2010. These are to encourage people to go greener when it comes to heating their homes.
If you are interested in applying for any of those rebates, you should ask your contractor to get you a form, which can be easily downloaded from the government website.
